Three hijab-clad girls sitting across from the angry woman look puzzled as they lean forward to hear her. They cannot make out what she is saying, “but I do not think it is polite,” one of the girls whispers.

This is what the woman is saying: “You need to challenge the men in your religion, and the imams, to respect women.”

One of the girls demurs: “But we are respected in our religion.”

The ferocity continues. “We don’t put up with that crap.”

By wearing hijab, these girls are identifiably Muslim, and whether they like it or not they find themselves having to defend their faith, as the three friends did on the subway.

Women wear it for reasons as varied and personal as the patterns woven into the scarf’s fabric.

To some it is effortless but as essential as “putting on a pair of shoes,” as a hijab-clad woman walking along Toronto’s waterfront said recently. Others do it unwillingly to appease families. “Hijab wasn’t enough for my husband,” says a woman who has since stopped wearing it. “He would have liked niqab (which covers the entire face except for the eyes).”

But many who choose it as teens or adults say it’s a decision that comes from self-confidence and empowerment, not coercion.

These hijab-wearers, it seems, are moved by faith or motivated by political ideals. And some are grateful for the desexualizing effect of a scarf and loose clothing. It makes them less approachable, more “respected,” they say.

“I feel (hijab) is part of who I am,” says University of Toronto pharmacy student Gehad El Sayed, who announced to her parents in Grade 6 that she wanted to wear one. “I do regular things. I play soccer and volleyball. School is important. At my job, I interact with people; I’m not stuck in a cubicle.”

She says she has not had any hostile encounters on the street over her choice to cover her head.

Not her, but it is only moments later, while El Sayed is on her way to a class, that the brutishly angry blond woman condemns the three young hijabis in the subway car.

Three women explain why they wear hijab.

“But I was scared,” recalls Syed, now 24. “How would people react? Could I live up to it? I wanted to love it.”

When she was 18 she enrolled in Ryerson University’s social work program — a course of study she chose and introduced to her parents, who weren’t aware of the profession. She felt renewed.

“Freedom!” she says. “It was a time for me. I really felt confident about myself and for the first time was making decisions for myself.”

That first semester she signed up for the annual GTA Muslim convention, Reviving the Islamic Spirit.

“It was at SkyDome — to me that’s the symbol of Toronto — and it was full of my own people and people from all over the world speaking different languages, and for the first time I thought, ‘Hijab is cool.’

“There were so many people doing it. What’s stopping me?”

She had trial runs: three days at the convention, once to the grocery store and once on the TTC. She liked it. Hijab felt like an act of worship.

When she later read about families returning to the U.S. from the convention being interrogated and fingerprinted and having their cellphones confiscated, she found deeper layers of conviction. Hijab now spoke to her sense of social justice.

“I felt it was a form of racism. It was only Muslims they were checking. I decided hijab would be my form of resistance and freedom of expression. I wanted to be identified as a Muslim.”

There were also unexpected benefits. “I grew up in Scarborough and got hit on just waiting for the bus from when I was 14. By men, twice my age.” Now there was a new distance.

And for her, a new experience of her beauty framed in a simple scarf. “That was surprising and pleasing. It wasn’t a struggle. It actually looked very nice.”

On the downside, some of her university friends stopped talking to her. One stopped sitting beside her in class.

Syed, now 24, lives in Redmond, Wash., with her husband and newborn baby boy. She recently helped start a small Islamic school.

She’s in Toronto for an extended family visit. “Hijab is part of my identity,” she says in her cousin’s condo in Don Mills. “It opened the door to self-discovery.”

Like other hijabis, she says, she’s weary of justifying the garment. “We need to stop explaining why we wear hijab and say, ‘It’s cool.’ ”

On Jan. 1, 2009, when she was 17 and in Grade 11, she joined them. She picked the date because she was sure to be able to remember it.

What spurred her was a speech by actress Hanan Turk at the Reviving the Islamic Spirit convention in December 2008. Turk had started wearing hijab two years earlier.

“I was curious,” Sahar recalls. “She was very famous in Egypt and gorgeous and had it all: husband, kids and did all these movies. She didn’t make excuses for herself. It made me think about my situation. What’s stopping me from putting it on?”

She found another role model in her mother, Sanaa, who started wearing hijab at 40.

The head scarf made Sahar more attentive to her faith, she says. “It reminds me that since I don’t live in a Muslim country, I have to keep my mind on my faith and that I’m representing Islam.”

Moroccan-born Sahar is an active teenager. Now 18, she goes to McMaster University, where she studies kinesiology. She also teaches piano, tutors French, snowboards, practises taekwondo, plays soccer and works at an electronics store.

She wants to be a doctor.

Sahar says hijab is about her relationship with God. “I feel closer. We put it on to pray, and when we wear it all the time it keeps me aware he’s everywhere and all-knowing.”

She believes women are honoured in her religion. “Women are like diamonds ... You can see them in the glass case, but you don’t get to touch every one.”

With, her heart-shaped face and dark eyes, Sahar gets lots of male attention. Hijab offers some protection. “I felt it would be a lot easier if I had it on and I wouldn’t have to explain to everyone why I can’t have a boyfriend.

“I always wondered what it was like to have a boyfriend, but I don’t think I ever would since I have seen what all my friends go through. I don’t want that.”

Instead she attends all-girl events where she can wear party dresses — and release her long, dark hair.

At 30, Siddiqi is an extroverted mother of three — a 2½-year-old boy and 4-month-old twins of both genders — on maternity leave from Homelands Senior Public School in Mississauga, where she teaches Grade 8. Her husband, Yelman, is a chartered accountant.

“I was born and raised in this culture and grew up in the school system where I now teach,” Siddiqi says. “I am Muslim and Canadian.”

She was brought up in Mississauga. Her father told her she could be anything in life she wanted.

“Back then, in the 1970s, maybe we didn’t have enough confidence,” says her mother, Alia Khan, who is 50. “The hijab wasn’t so much known. The generation now is more confident. We were praying and fasting, but we tried very hard to fit in.”

A pilgrimage to Mecca in 2006 with her husband and in-laws was a turning point for Siddiqi. “We were away from superficial things. Our life for three weeks revolved around prayer and goodness. It was a beautiful thing, the most peaceful place in the world.”

It captured a way of thinking and living she wanted to continue at home. She went back to work for two weeks without the scarf, but was yearning for something more, a greater closeness to God, which she believed could be expressed by wearing a scarf.

“When I had it on I thought, ‘This is me. This is what I should be doing.’ But I was conscious of how people would react. At our school, there are 400 kids who knew me a certain way.”

But the response was affirming. Students, she recalls, looked at her in her new garment and said, “Oh, people who wear scarves are normal. They are just like us.”

While she says wearing hijab may lead to assumptions that she isn’t a native speaker or well-educated, overall she has not had a hostile experience wearing the head scarf.

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